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Afghanistan peace plan would increase Pakistan’s role
By Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers December 09, 2012 12:46:28 PM
WASHINGTON - The Afghan government is pursuing an ambitious new peace initiative in which Pakistan would replace the United States in arranging direct talks between the warring sides and the Taliban would be granted government posts that effectively could cede to them political control of their southern and eastern strongholds.
If implemented, the plan would diminish the role of the United States in the peace process, but would still leave Washington with input on a number of critical issues, including the terms for initiating negotiations. Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Great Britain also would be involved.
The plan envisions ending the war by 2015 through a ceasefire and negotiations in the second half of next year, most likely in Saudi Arabia. Pakistan would help select the leaders of the Taliban and other rebel groups who would take part in the negotiations with the Afghan government. The effort, the plan says, should be conducted “through one consistent and coherent channel,” a measure that would secure a role for Afghan President Hamid Karzai after the end of his term following April 2014 elections.
Another provision would give the insurgents a voice on “issues related . . . to the withdrawal” of the U.S.-led NATO force by the end of 2014.
The plan foresees the United States working with Kabul and Islamabad in determining which insurgent leaders would participate. The United States also would be critical to approving the removal of the insurgent negotiators from the U.N.’s list of terrorists.
Entitled “Peace Process Roadmap to 2015,” the blueprint represents a decision by Karzai – in close coordination with Pakistan – to assume the lead in peace-making efforts following the collapse earlier this year of an Obama administration bid to persuade the Taliban to participate in direct talks with Kabul.
The new initiative comes amid persistent distrust between Karzai and the Obama administration and deep insecurity in Kabul over future U.S. support. Those concerns and the U.S. failure to arrange peace talks appear to have pushed Karzai closer to Pakistan, whose army and main intelligence service are widely believed to exercise significant influence over Taliban and other militant leaders based in Pakistan’s border areas with Afghanistan.
The plan also comes as the ongoing U.S. combat troop pullout and cuts in U.S. financial aid to Afghanistan are fueling fears in both countries that violence and instability could worsen, spurring them to take matters into their own hands.
The blueprint, a copy of which was obtained by McClatchy, officially is the work of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council, which is charged with overseeing government peace efforts. But it was drafted by Karzai and his inner circle over the past six months in coordination with Pakistan, according to a person familiar with the document who requested anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
The plan was presented to Pakistan and the United States during visits last month by High Peace Council Chairman Salauddin Rabbani, who Karzai named to the post after Rabbani’s father, former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, was assassinated in September 2011.
The State Department declined to comment on the plan, refusing even to confirm its existence. However, a State Department official, who requested anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity, was authorized to say that, “The United States continues to support an Afghan-led peace process and welcomes initiatives through which Afghans sit down with other Afghans in pursuit of that goal."
The Afghan embassy did not respond to a request to discuss the plan.
“By 2015, Taliban, Hezb-e-Islami and other armed groups will have given up armed opposition, transformed from military entities into political parties, and are actively participating in the country’s political and constitutional processes, including national elections,” says the plan’s preamble. “NATO/ISAF forces will have departed from Afghanistan, leaving the ANSF (Afghan National Security Forces) as the only legitimate armed forces delivering security and protection to the Afghan population.”
Despite that optimistic forecast, however, the plan may rest on shaky legs. Its far-reaching assumptions not only could doom it to failure, but risk an all-out civil war before the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, completes its pullout.
“This is living in a dream world of wishful thinking,” said Marvin Weinbaum, a Middle East Institute scholar who served as a State Department intelligence analyst on Afghanistan. “It is not based on anything that the Taliban has given us reason to expect.”
A major assumption is that all insurgent leaders and their fighters will participate even though the Taliban have consistently rejected negotiations with Karzai, who they denounce as an American puppet. Moreover, the insurgency is far from being monolithic and many leaders are known to distrust each other and Pakistan.
Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar and other leaders based in Pakistan could come under pressure from the Pakistani military to take part if they balk. But such pressure could backfire, risking Afghan militants joining Pakistani Islamists fighting to topple their government.
In an incident underscoring the hurdles, two Taliban factions claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack on Thursday that wounded Asadullah Khalid, the chief of Afghanistan’s intelligence service. Karzai on Saturday alleged that the attack was planned in Pakistan, but he denied that the Taliban were responsible.
The new plan would preserve Afghanistan as a parliamentary democracy, denying the militants the Islamic rule for which they’ve spent years fighting.
It also appears to ignore warnings from politicians of the former Northern Alliance against giving the Taliban and their allies power that they hadn’t won in elections. The Northern Alliance, dominated by ethnic minorities, battled the Taliban, which is made up primarily of the dominant Pashtun ethnic group, until the 2001 U.S. invasion. Many former alliance members now head Karzai’s political opposition and hold key army, police and intelligence posts.
"Any Afghanistan reconciliation effort will have to address varied and complex ethnic concerns,” acknowledged a U.S. official, who requested anonymity in order to discuss the issue.
Finally, the key role that the plan confers on Pakistan could inflame suspicion among many Afghans that Islamabad plans to exert influence in a post-war Afghanistan – especially to block a pro-India tilt – by placing former insurgents in cabinet posts, ministries, provincial governorships and positions like police chiefs and district administrators.
“The northerners won’t buy this,” said Weinbaum, referring to former Northern Alliance leaders. “So what you get then is the beginning of a civil war.”
Pakistan is widely despised in Afghanistan, particularly by minorities who dominate the country’s north, because of its sponsorship of the Taliban’s bloody nationwide takeover in the mid-1990s and the support and sanctuary that they and other insurgents allegedly still receive from the Pakistani army and the army-run Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI.
In principles governing the new peace process, the plan reiterates Afghan and U.S. demands that the Taliban and other insurgents cut ties with al Qaida and renounce violence.
But in a shift that could raise concerns among human rights and women’s groups, the plan changes what had been a demand for the insurgents “accept” the Afghan Constitution to one that they “respect” it.
“Any outcome of the peace process must respect the Afghan Constitution and must not jeopardize the rights and freedoms that the citizens of Afghanistan, both men and women, enjoy under the Constitution,” the plan says.
The plan comprises five steps. The first step, which now appears underway, calls for Pakistan to end cross-border shelling of Afghan villages and to free Taliban detainees. Nine were released last month after Rabbani’s visit, and Pakistan has agreed to free more.
In the first half of 2013, Afghan, U.S. and Pakistani officials are to agree on terms for removing Taliban leaders “willing to engage in peace talks” from a U.N. terrorism list and giving them safe passage. Pakistan would “facilitate direct contact” between Afghan officials “and identified leaders of the Taliban and other armed opposition groups.”
Afghan, Pakistani and U.S. officials would “explore and agree to terms for initiating direct peace talks “ between the sides “with a focus on Saudi Arabia as the venue.”
The negotiations would begin in the second half of 2013 “preferably through one consistent and coherent channel, with the aim of securing agreements on priority issues, such as ending violence, allowing space for the provision of basic public services, e.g. education, humanitarian aid, and security the conduct of the upcoming elections,” the plan says.
The sides would agree to a ceasefire and terms for the release of Taliban prisoners by the government “in return for their agreement to disengage and renounce violence.”
The sides also would “reach an understanding on issues related to security and the withdrawal of international forces.” and agree on rules for the insurgents’ participation in 2014 provincial council and 2015 parliamentary elections.
Another provision would confer considerable political power on the insurgents by allowing them to become cabinet members, provincial governors, district administrators, police chiefs and other key officials.
“The negotiating parties to agree on modalities for the inclusion of Taliban and other armed opposition leaders in the power structure of the state, to include non-elected positions at different levels with due consideration of legal and governance principles,” the plan says.
That provision, combined with one for an agreement “creating immediate space for education and humanitarian and development aid and public services,” could effectively cede political control of the Taliban’s southern and eastern heartland to the insurgents.
The agreements would be implemented in the first half of 2014, and the final phase, set for the second half of 2014, would be used to build international cooperation on preserving the long-term stability of Afghanistan and the region, the plan says.
CORRECTION: Paragraph 10 of this version has been revised to provide the correct date for the assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani.
Email: jlanday@mcclatchydc.com; Twitter: @jonathanlanday
Protesters Attack Iranian Consulate In Herat
December 9, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Reports from Herat say some 200 demonstrators tried to storm Iran’s consulate in the western Afghan city in protest at the alleged killing of Afghan immigrants by Iranian security forces.
Reports say the crowd threw rocks and broke the consulate's windows before security forces drove them back by firing warning shots into the air.
At least three protesters were reported injured in the clashes.
The demonstrators called on Tehran to hand over the bodies of 13 Afghans who they say crossed the border into Iran, where they were seized and shot dead by Iranian security forces some three months ago.
More than 2 million Afghan refugees and illegal immigrants live in Iran.
Based on reporting by AFP, bokhdinews.af, and khaama.com
Karzai: U.S. Troops Can Have Immunity In Exchange For 'Sovereignty'
December 9, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Afghan President Hamid Karzai says he is willing to consider giving immunity to U.S. troops in a security agreement to be signed next year if his demand for "Afghanistan's sovereignty" is respected.
The deal will outline the form of a U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, as well as the number of troops and bases, after NATO forces withdraw in 2014.
Karzai said his key demands were that the United States hand over all detainees in its custody and shut all its jails in the country, rescind control of Afghan airspace, and refrain from raids on Afghan villages.
"Within those conditions, and once those conditions are fulfilled...Afghanistan is willing to consider immunity" for the troops, he said.
The United States still has more than 65,000 soldiers in Afghanistan.
Based on reporting by dpa and AFP
Abducted U.S. Doctor Freed In Afghanistan
December 9, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
A U.S. doctor who had been abducted by the Taliban five days ago has been rescued in eastern Afghanistan.
In a statement, NATO-led forces said Dilip Joseph had been captured by Taliban fighters on December 5 outside the Afghan capital, Kabul.
The mission to rescue him early on December 9 was ordered after information showed that Joseph was "in imminent danger of injury or death."
General John Allen, the top commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said the rescue was carried out by U.S. and Afghan forces.
No other details of the rescue operation were immediately available.
Based on reporting by AP and Reuters
14 militants killed in Afghanistan within 24 hours
KABUL, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- Up to 14 Taliban militants have been killed and five others detained in different military operations in Afghanistan, authorities said Sunday.
"The Afghan National Police in partnership with the army and the NATO-led coalition forces launched eight cleanup operations in Kunar, Kandahar, Logar, Helmand and Nimroz provinces, killing eight Taliban insurgents and detaining five others over the past 24 hours," the country's Interior Ministry said in a statement.
They also found and seized weapons, the statement said, without saying if there were any casualties on the side of security forces.
In another development, six militants were killed in a coalition airstrike in Helmand province 555 km south of capital Kabul on Saturday evening, a provincial police spokesman said Sunday.
"The killed militants were involved in anti-government activities. Prior to their deaths they crammed a car with explosives to launch terror attack possibly in provincial capital Lashkar Gah," spokesman Farid Farhang told Xinhua.
"The explosives-packed car was powerful enough to have caused significant injury or loss of life," he said, adding that weapons and the booby-trapped vehicle were destroyed in the raid that took place in the Sara Godar area outside Lashkar Gah at about 4:30 p.m. local time Saturday.
The Taliban has been waging an insurgency since its regime was toppled by a U.S-led invasion in late 2001.
A total of three civilians were killed and 90 others wounded when Taliban carried out a suicide car bombing in eastern Wardak province on Nov. 23.
Khalid Will Return as Spy Chief, Karzai Says
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 08 December 2012
Afghanistan's spy chief Asadullah Khalid will return to his position as head of intelligence when he makes a full recovery from Thursday's assassination attempt against him, President Hamid Karzai said Saturday.
A full investigation into the attack is underway, Karzai said at the Saturday press conference, but one thing is already known for sure - the bomber was from Pakistan.
"We know that this man who came as a guest to meet with Asadullah Khalid came from Pakistan. We know that for a fact," he told reporters, adding that he was hopeful of Pakistan's full cooperation with the investigation.
Khalid survived the Thursday afternoon suicide attack at a National Directorate of Security guesthouse in Kabul, but received substantial injuries to the lower part of his body.
After receiving emergency surgery and blood transfusions at the NDS hospital in Kabul, he was moved to Bagram Airfield hospital for ongoing treatment.
The bomber, who met with Khalid on the pretext of peace talks, carried the bomb in his underwear, according to an AFP report quoting NDS official.
Isaf commander Gen. John Allen visited Khalid at Bagram on Friday and spoke with his medical team, according to a statement from Isaf.
"Asadullah Khalid has led the National Directorate of Security with great courage and determination," Allen said following the visit. "I wish this lionhearted Afghan patriot a speedy recovery. My prayers are with him and his family during this trying period."
Karzai said Friday that he was told by doctors that Khalid was "doing well".
Afghan experts have voiced concerns that the Afghan chief of intelligence was able to be targeted in this way and warned of people losing faith in the country's capacity to secure itself.
"The National Directorate of Security and especially the National Security Council should clarify to the people of Afghanistan whether there were the hands of the regional intelligence involved or whether it is really the enemies [insurgents]," analyst Gen. Ahminullah Amarkhil told TOLOnews on Friday.
A civil society activist Mohammad Ismael Azad said, "The main challenge for the Afghan government or the system is this: that they don't know who is on their side, so they are getting it wrong. They should know their allies."
The attack is similar to the suicide bombing that killed the chairman of the Afghan High Peace Council Burhanuddin Rabbani in September 2011.
Rabbani was killed at his home in a meeting with an apparent peace envoy who had hidden a bomb in his turban.
Khalid has already survived at least two other attempts on his life. One was in southern Kandahar province in October 2011 while he serving as the Minister of Border and Tribal Affairs, and another in a 2008 roadside bombing when he was governor of Kandahar in 2008.
Khalid was appointed head of the NDS by Karzai in September.
For Afghan Officials, Facing Prospect of Death Is in the Job Description
New York Times By AZAM AHMED December 8, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - There are so many ways for an Afghan official to die: car bombs, suicide attacks, a volley of bullets or, in the case of one particularly enterprising assassin, a handgun hidden in the sole of a shoe.
On Thursday, a Taliban suicide bomber with a bomb hidden in his groin area tried to assassinate the new chief of Afghanistan’s intelligence service in Kabul, seriously wounding him. Two weeks before, insurgents welcomed two of the country’s newest governors with an armed assault in Helmand Province and a car bomb that leveled an entire city block in Wardak Province. Both governors survived and came away with an attribute essential for politicians here: a sharpened sense of fatalism.
“Assassination attempts are a part of the job,” said Abdul Majid Khogyani, the new Wardak governor, seated in a makeshift office in his compound’s frigid courtyard, the only place untouched by the bombing. “It comes with the package.” He actually grinned.
Government officials here do not worry so much about the wrath of constituents; a more immediate fear is coldblooded assassination at the hands of the Taliban. Public service jobs are among the most dangerous in Afghanistan, with hundreds of officials killed every year. The more important the official, the greater the risk — some particularly fortunate, and well defended, governors have survived more than a dozen assassination attempts.
In the last few years, the Taliban have stepped up their campaign against politicians, targeting dozens of provincial and district governors, police chiefs and even marginal officials. It has been an effective tool, demonstrating the insurgents’ power to inflict chaos and sow fear among government supporters. Last year, assassinations claimed 304 lives, the most since 2001, according to a United Nations report.
Barring the remote possibility of a peace agreement with the Taliban, the killings are only likely to rise as the American-led military coalition withdraws its combat forces over the next two years.
Perhaps the most favored targets are the 34 provincial governors, most of whom are far from the relatively secure enclave of Kabul. Appointed by the president, governors are often the highest-ranking officials most Afghans will ever see.
If the persistence of attacks suggests a high-priority target, Gulab Mangal, the former governor of Helmand Province, is a Taliban trophy. Mr. Mangal survived 17 deadly attacks in his five years in office, including a rocket attack on a helicopter, before he was replaced this year by President Hamid Karzai.
“Even my friends asked me to quit,” he said, emitting a burst of laughter. “But I loved my job and slowly, as time went on, I grew fearless.”
Not all politicians are so fortunate. Last year, a suicide bomber with explosives in his turban killed the mayor of Kandahar. This spring, the former governor of Uruzgan was fatally gunned down. A man wearing a police uniform with a suicide bomb vest underneath killed Gen. Daoud Daoud, the police commander who oversaw security in nine northern provinces, last year. The year before, insurgents killed the governor of Kunduz Province by bombing the mosque where he prayed.
Though some assassinations are carried out for personal reasons, most are political. Despite the risks, governorships have retained their allure. While the position pays an average of only $23,000 a year, the job affords great power, and abundant opportunities for patronage and corruption.
And after three decades of war — with the Soviets, among themselves or against the Taliban — some Afghans say they have become inured to the threat of death.
“The mind-set we have in Afghanistan is different,” said Farid Mamundzay, a deputy minister at the Independent Directorate of Local Governance. “We see people dying on a weekly if not daily basis. We’ve gotten used to it.”
“If you die, you die,” he added.
Still, politicians take security seriously, spending vast amounts, sometimes from their own pockets, and often taking a direct role in their self-preservation.
“I should know personally every individual who is serving me as a security guard,” insisted Abdul Jabar Taqwa, the governor of Kabul, tightening his right fist, which is knotted with white scars from burns from a 2011 bomb attack.
In Parwan Province, just north of Kabul, Gov. Abdul Basir Salangi has survived three attacks during his four years as governor. Asked how, he reached over to the side of his desk and produced a loaded assault rifle.
“I take this with me everywhere,” he said, nestling the gun against his shoulder. “To the office, to my home, everywhere.”
A former jihadi commander during the war against the Soviets, he knows how to use it, his staff members say, and is more than happy to do so. When six suicide bombers stormed the gates of his compound last year, he looked out his office window, spotted an insurgent and shot him in the face.
The bombers killed 22 people. Mr. Salangi keeps the grisly images of the attack in his office, a banquet hall-style room with seven gold and glass chandeliers and a faux fireplace.
“The enemy is always watching us,” he said. “If they find a single opportunity, they will take it.”
Leaving the job hardly guarantees one’s safety. “I’m a target even now,” said Mr. Mangal, who left his post in Helmand this year. Only now he has less security.
Mr. Mangal was deeply unpopular with insurgents in Helmand for his efforts to eradicate opium poppy cultivation, a lucrative business that helps finance the Taliban and other entrenched interests. Six armed men guard his Kabul home, with several more posted behind a concrete reinforced door and another guard in front of the house.
His family never grew accustomed to the constant attacks.
“Before he was a governor, we had a normal, happy life,” said Muhammad Anwar, his oldest son, a university student. “We would have preferred him to have a smaller but secure job, where he was safe and we were, too.”
Mr. Khogyani, the governor of Wardak, was at all times surrounded by a dozen armed men, part of the group of 50 who protect his compound. He has so far refused to accept assistance from the local police chief, fearful of corruption. Instead, he foots the bill himself, paying the sons of his former mujahedeen comrades to serve as his security detail.
Mr. Khogyani walked slowly around his bombed-out compound, detailing the wreckage with a strange mix of fear and pride: his bedroom, where the roof had lifted from the house; his kitchen, collapsed in a heap of steel and brick; his wooden bed frame, in splinters, tossed 10 yards from the house to rest by a fountain.
He climbed atop the remnants of a wall along the edge of the yard. Beyond it, everything within 100 yards of the blast was leveled: a midwifery, the bureau of statistics, an entire block of homes.
Asked whether he considered revenge, he paused, then shook his head.
“I have accepted that one day I will die,” he said. “If my time is up, no one will save me.”
Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Kabul, Jawad Sukhanyar from Parwan, and Habib Zohori from Wardak
3 Killed in US Drone Strike in Pakistan
VOA News December 9, 2012
Officials in Pakistan said a suspected U.S. drone strike has killed three militants near the Afghan border.
Officials said drone missiles hit a militant compound Sunday in Miran Shah, the main town in North Waziristan, known as a stronghold of Taliban and al-Qaida militants.
Pakistan has repeatedly criticized U.S. drone attacks as a violation of its sovereignty.
U.S. officials have said the strikes are an important tool in defeating militants.
Some information for this report was provided by AP and AFP.
Attack on Spy Chief Won't Derail Peace Moves, Says Karzai
Wall Street Journal By NATHAN HODGE And ZIAULHAQ SULTANI December 8, 2012
KABUL - Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Saturday that a suicide-bombing attack that nearly claimed the life of his spy chief wouldn't derail efforts to reach out to the Taliban.
Speaking at a press conference at the presidential palace in Kabul, Mr. Karzai said the attempted assassination on Thursday was a deliberate attempt to thwart peace initiatives but vowed to press ahead with a bid to facilitate talks with the insurgent leadership.
"Our efforts for the security and stability of Afghanistan will continue," he said.
Later this month, representatives of the Taliban are supposed to travel to France to meet leading Afghan politicians in a potentially ground-breaking attempt to open dialogue between the insurgency and the country's main power brokers. The planned meeting, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, is supposed to include two advisers to Mr. Karzai.
Mr. Karzai said he welcomed the initiative, organized by a French think tank, as a positive step but added that future contacts should be held inside Afghanistan. "The best place to talk and bring peace between Afghans is Afghanistan," he said.
The Taliban have consistently rejected the idea of negotiating directly with Mr. Karzai, describing him as a puppet of foreign powers. But Mr. Karzai said he personally met a representative of the Taliban as recently as Friday.
On Thursday, a suicide bomber posing as a Taliban peace emissary seriously wounded Asadullah Khalid, the head of the country's National Directorate of Security. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which took place inside one of the agency's guest houses in a residential neighborhood of Kabul.
While Mr. Karzai didn't directly blame the Pakistani government, he claimed the attack was organized in Quetta, Pakistan, the headquarters of the Taliban high command. The sophistication of the attack, he suggested, pointed to the involvement of an unnamed foreign agency. "The Taliban took responsibility, but the truth is that such a skillful attack...is not manageable by the Taliban," he said.
The Pakistani foreign affairs ministry later said in a statement that the Afghan government should share information or evidence it might have about the attack before it starts leveling charges, the Associated Press reported. The ministry also offered to help the Afghan government investigate any lapses it had in the intelligence chief's security. "Pakistan is ready to assist any investigation of this criminal act," it said.
The assassination attempt immediately prompted questions about how the bomber managed to bring the device inside the guarded compound. In a statement Friday, the NDS said the explosives charge was "skillfully placed" on the attacker's body, apparently concealed in his underwear.
High-level dignitaries in Afghanistan are usually surrounded by rings of armed security, and physical pat-downs are a routine measure for anyone wishing to meet an Afghan VIP. But Afghanistan's deeply conservative culture also forbids intimate physical contact between strangers, and searching a person's groin or underwear would be considered extremely offensive.
Mr. Karzai alluded to this, saying the attacker took advantage of Mr. Khalid's sense of propriety. "Khalid himself refused complete search of the attacker because of hospitality we Afghans have," he said.
Mr. Khalid is now being treated at the U.S. military hospital at Bagram, north of Kabul. Mr. Karzai said the spy chief was conscious and able to speak.
Thursday's attack came amid an apparent thaw in Afghan-Pakistani relations and renewed efforts to jump-start a stalled peace process. Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul traveled to Pakistan late last month in a bid to establish direct contacts with the Taliban; Afghan and Pakistani officials are also expected to meet in the coming days in Turkey.
The attempt on Mr. Khalid's life also prompted theorizing about a possible reprisal for a string of recent bombing attacks in Quetta that claimed the lives of some Taliban officials. Mr. Karzai dismissed such speculation as "totally false."
In September 2011, former Afghan President Burhannudin Rabbani, the Afghan government's point man for reaching out to the insurgents, was killed by a suicide bomber who had concealed a bomb in his turban. Mr. Karzai said that the July 2011 assassination of his younger half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, also took place as "intensive peace talks" were beginning.
"Every time we take one step forward to peace talks...these attacks happen," he said.
Write to Nathan Hodge at nathan.hodge@wsj.com
Iran seizes over 11 tons of illicit drugs
TEHRAN, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Iranian border police have seized over 11 tons of illicit drugs in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan, semi-official Mehr news agency reported Sunday.
Iran's border police chief, Brigadier General Hossein Zolfaqari, said Saturday that after 36 hours of clash with smugglers, 11.039 tons of illicit drugs were seized. Of this amount, 10.693 tons was opium and the rest was hashish, he added.
It is the largest shipment that has been seized since 1979, Zolfaqari was quoted as saying.
Border police forces, who had been informed about the planned movement of illicit drugs across the border, were stationed along a 77-km stretch of border between Iran and Pakistan, clashed with smugglers and seized the shipment after killing one of the smugglers and injuring a number of them, said Zolfaqari.
On Oct. 17, a senior Iranian police commander, Colonel Eftekhari, said Iranian Law Enforcement Police Forces seized over 4.5 tons of opium after intercepting a drug cargo near the country 's capital city of Tehran.
Iran is located at the crossroad of the international drug smuggling route from Afghanistan to Europe.
US-led coalition: American doctor abducted by Taliban rescued in eastern Afghanistan
Associated Press Sunday, December 9, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - An American doctor abducted by the Taliban five days ago was rescued Sunday in eastern Afghanistan, the U.S.-led military coalition said.
Dr. Dilip Joseph was captured by Taliban insurgents Wednesday outside the Afghan capital, in the Sarobi district of Kabul province.
He was rescued in an early morning operation ordered after intelligence showed that the doctor was in imminent danger of injury or possible death, according to a statement.
“This was a combined operation of U.S. and Afghan forces,” said 1st Lt. Joseph Alonso, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan. “Information was collected through multiple intelligence sources, which allowed Afghan and coalition forces to identify the location of Joseph and the criminals responsible for his captivity.”
Gen. John Allen, the top commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said the joint force planned, rehearsed and successfully conducted the operation.
“Thanks to them, Dr. Joseph will soon be rejoining his family and loved ones,” Allen said.
The statement did not say where Joseph is from, or whether he was harmed in captivity.
No other details of the rescue operation were immediately available.
ECC Removal Violates Constitution: Political Parties Council
TOLOnews.com By Haseeb Maudoodi Saturday, 08 December 2012
The Cabinet's decision to remove the Election Complaints Commission (ECC) from the electoral process goes against provisions in Afghanistan's constitution for a fair and transparent poll, the Cooperation and Coordination Council of Political Parties (CCPP) said Saturday.
CCPP members on Saturday urged lawmakers not to approve the redrafted election law without the ECC because it will not guarantee a transparent election.
"The Cabinet decision is against the provisions of Afghanistan's constitution and a facilitator of more fraud," CCPP member Hamidullah Farooqi said. "The election is a national and professional process. A professional and independent organ should follow up any issues related to it."
The Council of Ministers last Monday approved the election law with the exception of the independent ECC. Instead, the ministers recommended that oversight of the final poll decision will be assigned to the president-appointed Supreme Court.
"The Afghan courts are not able to fairly resolve the issues of the election as it has been shown in the past. A special and professional commission should follow up these issues," CCPP member Asadullah Sahadati said at the press conference.
The politicians also accused the government of sidelining political parties and not engaging in dialogue to solve national issues.
"There is no place for the political parties and civil society organs within the Afghan government which is a dangerous sign," CCPP member Faizullah Zaki said, adding that he fears there will be fraud in the next election.
"The government is also not eager to solve issues through dialogue with political parties," he said.
The CCPP is a coalition of at least 20 Afghan political parties launched in September to push for a transparent and fair election. The next election is less than 16 months away on April 5 2014.
The ECC has been a more politically sensitive since the parliament approved the presence of two foreign commissioners on its board. However, that approval was subsequently rejected by the senate in a vote last month.
The Council of Ministers decision to remove the ECC altogether will require approval again from the parliament.
Afghanistan Seeks Divorce From Long-Standing Marital Traditions
By Farangis Najibullah December 9, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
In Afghanistan, few bat an eye when a young suitor spends a small fortune to secure his bride.
The payment of a "walwar" -- essentially a premarital fee paid to the bride-to-be's parents -- can run into the thousands of dollars, adding to the already exorbitant costs plunked down for the wedding itself.
Now there is a movement within the country's government to divorce the Afghan people from such long-standing but financially crippling customs.
The Afghan Women's Affairs Ministry is waging war on the walwar, arguing that it is not only technically illegal but unnecessarily buries families under tremendous debt.
"The campaign mainly focuses on unaffordable walwars, a shameful custom, which is putting enormous financial strain on families," says Deputy Women's Affairs Minister Mezhgan Mustafavi. "But it also includes a fight against some of our other marital traditions, such as marrying off girls to settle family feuds -- a so-called 'bad' marriage."
The goal of the campaign is to improve women's lives and protect their rights, because ultimately it's the woman in the arrangement who suffers the consequences, Mustafavi says.
In the case of walwar payments, the bride often "starts her new life in a family struggling under the burden of debt," Mustafavi says. "Or, in the case of 'bad' marriages, she is usually treated as an enemy's daughter."
Clerics' Participation Vital
The ministry has called on the country's influential clerics, as well as media and law-enforcement agencies, to help promote the campaign.
Some 400 religious figures from all over the country recently assembled in Kabul for a meeting organized with the help of the Hajj and Religious Affairs Ministry, during which they condemned the walwar tradition and other long-standing customs that violate women's rights.
The clerics agreed to include lectures on marital traditions in their mosque sermons, potentially reaching millions of Afghans throughout the country.
The popular television station Tolo agreed to record such sermons and broadcast them weekly during peak hours.
In Afghanistan's deeply conservative society, the word of clerics carries significant weight and the Women's Affairs Ministry considers their participation vital to the success of the campaign.
"Many people don't know that expensive walwars, which effectively mean selling your daughter, have nothing to do with Islam," Mustafavi says. "In fact, it violates both civil and Shari'a laws."
"According to Afghanistan's law banning violence against women, selling or buying a person in the context of marriage is a crime punishable with up to 10 years' imprisonment," Mustafavi says. "Our civil laws ban any un-Islamic preconditions in matrimonies. Our Family Code clearly states that customs like the walwar, bride price, marrying off girls to settle family scores, or marrying off girls as a blood price for a victim's family are against Islam. Therefore, such customs are forbidden."
Thousands Of Dollars
Shari'a law does allow for a potential bride to request money from the groom's family. While the amount is not fixed, Shari'a rules advise that the amount should be small and easily affordable to her new family.
Some clerics even estimate that the amount should not exceed a few hundred Afghanis, the equivalent of $5 or $10.
In reality, however, the families of many Afghan brides demand that the groom spend thousands of dollars in walwar payments and other gifts, including jewelry. In addition, the groom is required to pay for a lavish wedding banquet and a string of wedding-related parties.
The ministry estimates that the average Afghan family spends up to $15,000 in wedding costs.
In the social sphere, the cost of the dowry and the lavishness of the wedding parties can affect each family's social standing. To affirm high status, families save for years and young men commonly leave home to endure years of hard labor abroad to raise cash.
Desperate to avoid such costs, some families that have both sons and daughters marry off the groom's sister to the bride's brother in so-called "badal" marriages, which literally translates as "exchange."
"The laws to punish such actions have almost never been exercised," says Mustafavi. "We have asked law-enforcement agencies to bring to justice a few people who violate these laws in order to remind others that it is a crime to sell your daughter."
With contributions from RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan
One raid, two stories: Were insurgents killed? Or just a man’s family?
Washington Post By Anna Husarska December 8 , 2012
This is a story of an Afghan wedding gone badly wrong. Or perhaps of “an operation in search of an insurgent leader,” as the official report later said. It is hard to tell which. Probably both.
Meet Abdulrashid, a man with no last name, no profession, no literacy skills and no exact date of birth. He might be in his 30s. I first encounter him as I am interviewing internally displaced people in Afghanistan to highlight their fate, lest the world forget about them after foreign troops withdraw in 2014. Other refugees point him out, ask me to listen to his story: “Tell the world, please.”
Abdulrashid starts by describing to me an idyllic scene from this past March: As the last snows were melting in his village in northern Afghanistan, friends and family gathered in his three-room house to celebrate his sister’s wedding. This was in Faryab province, considered to be among the more peaceful areas in Afghanistan. While the war has raged in the south and the east, Faryab has escaped relatively unharmed.
In Afghan tradition, the wedding guests were dressed in their best and dining on an expansive buffet. At about 8 p.m., Abdulrashid’s wife stepped away to a quiet spot near the window to breast-feed their 2 1/2-year-old son.
And the idyll was suddenly shattered.
Helicopters were heard overhead, and then a voice shouted in Dari that everyone should come outside, walking backward. But before the guests could get out the door — I learn now to my utter surprise that the bride was 12 years old and the groom, the brother of Abdulrashid’s wife, was 14 — the house was full of soldiers, women and men. Abdulrashid could not tell their nationalities; some were Afghan and “some not,” he said, but they were “heavy with equipment.”
Then two explosions ripped through the house. Abdulrashid can’t say what caused them — bombs fired from a drone (prevalent in the area at the time) or an aircraft, or grenades tossed from the ground — but he is clear that “they destroyed two rooms” and wounded his youngest sister as well as the bride. The explosions, he says, were followed by shots fired from the outside, through the window.
Abdulrashid’s wife, Jamila, was hit. The child at her breast, Naquibullah, was struck in the neck and the abdomen and killed instantly. Jamila had a wound in her arm that gushed blood, and she was taken on a helicopter to a medical facility. Today, Jamila cannot use her arm.
Abdulrashid says his uncle, Baba Nazar, was also killed in this joint operation of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the Afghan National Security Forces. Afghans call these dreaded counterinsurgency operations, conducted by surprise and under the cover of darkness, “night raids.” In April, one month after this incident, the United States agreed to hand control over these raids to Afghan forces.
The ISAF, a U.N.-mandated international force under NATO control, was created in 2001. Part of its broad mission is to help the Afghan government “reduce the capability and will of the insurgency.”
After hearing Abdulrashid’s story, I search the ISAF’s Web site for its version of the events. The post-operation report makes no mention of a wedding party. It says that “an operation in search of an insurgent leader” who “plans and conducts attacks against coalition troops throughout northern Afghanistan” was conducted. The women and children who came out of the building, it says, were followed by a man with an AK-47who opened fire from behind the civilians. Two other insurgents fired as well, one from inside the building and the other from a nearby tent. “The security force returned fire, killing the three armed aggressors.”
The ISAF account goes on to state the only facts that coincide with Abdulrashid’s version of events: Jamila’s injuries and her evacuation to a hospital. No word of a child in her arms, nor of the uncle.
Abdulrashid says he is certain that no “insurgents” were killed; the only ones who perished that day were his son and his uncle, “over 60” years old.
Establishing the truth in Afghanistan is a daunting task. Those who follow the increasingly frequent attacks by Afghans on their mentors — allied soldiers, mostly Americans — suspect that all the locals are hostile to foreign troops. But those who follow the civilian death count have doubts about the ISAF reports.
Ten days later, on March 26, another night raid was conducted in the same vicinity and, Abdulrashid’s neighbors told him, nobody was killed. (He was with Jamila in the hospital at the time.) Yet the ISAF report on this incident says that “the combined security force was engaged by multiple insurgents with small arms fire. The security force returned fire, killing the attacking insurgents.”
Again, it is difficult to determine the truth.
There are so many incident reports in the ISAF files; how would those same events be described by the Afghans involved, I wonder.
Later in March, according to Abdulrashid’s relatives and other Afghans, the Taliban staged two successive attacks on that same village. Abdulrashid thinks they were looking for relatives of one man because they believed he was collaborating with the international forces; possibly they blamed him for the two ISAF raids. In the first attack, they shot his son, Qari, 18. The next day, they killed a woman named Bibi and shot her husband.
Were those retaliatory attacks? Was it a warning, as Abdulrashid suggests? These are questions without answers.
The United Nations, which tracks civilian casualties in Afghanistan, has reported a significant drop in deaths attributable to the ISAF in the past year, and has said that Taliban and other insurgents cause far more fatalities among civilians. But it is hard to know how many deaths like that of little Naquibullah go unreported or how many civilians are branded by the ISAF as “combatants” just because they are fighting-age men.
Although the international forces acknowledged injuring Abdulrashid’s wife in the first raid, they have not offered him the normal compensation. The legal team of the Norwegian Refugee Council delivered a letter to an ISAF base on his behalf, stating that his son was killed and specifying the medical costs incurred by his wife. He is waiting for an answer.
The day after the second night raid by the ISAF, 10 families fled from Abdulrashid’s village. The day after the second Taliban attack, seven more families left. Most of them came to the outskirts of Mazar-e Sharif, where they squat in primitive compounds. A total of 99 people from this community were displaced in quick succession: 12 men, 17 women, 49 girls and 21 boys. The families lost their livelihoods, left their land and are now in an even more precarious situation. .
While it may prove impossible to pin down the events that overtook Abdulrashid’s village in March, one more casualty can be counted in this endless war: These 99 Afghan “hearts and minds,” if ever they could be won, are now irrevocably out of reach.
Anna Husarska, a policy analyst, was special consultant for the Norwegian Refugee Council in Afghanistan.
Post-France Kapisa Under Control: Governor
TOLOnews.com By Sayed Azim Arash Saturday, 08 December 2012
The security of northeastern Kapisa province has been stable since the complete withdrawal of foreign combat troops last week, local officials said Saturday.
Governor Mehrabuddin Safi said in a Kabul press conference that Kapisa's security has not been upset by the withdrawal of France's troops with Afghan security forces taking full responsibility for the province.
"Last week, all French forces withdrew from Kapisa province and now the Afghans have the ability to fully protect their nation. There is no security concern," Safi said.
He added that reconstruction process is underway in the province and that development projects will continue in the future.
France left Kapisa slightly ahead of the end of year deadline promised earlier this year by President Francois Hollande in the country's presidential election after security assessments concluded that the Afghan forces could manage.
France has been reducing its presence in Afghanistan for some time. In recent months, around 543 French troops were deployed with most of them stationed in Kapisa province. At its peak in 2008, France had around 3,300 soldiers in Afghanistan.
According to iCasualties website which tracks the deaths of the Nato-led forces, 86 French soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan in the past 11 years of the war.
Peace Talks, Intelligence Failing in Afghanistan: MPs
TOLOnews.com By Saleha Soadat Saturday, 08 December 2012
Lawmakers on Saturday lashed out at the government for the apparent failure of peace negotiations and security in the wake of the assassination attempt against Afghanistan's spy chief by a suicide bomber.
In the Saturday parliamentary session, MPs reacted to the news that the suicide bomber had met with National Directorate of Security (NDS) chief Asadullah Khalid on the pretext of being a peace envoy, and criticised the intelligence unit for failing to prevent the suicide attack.
"If the [NDS] organisation cannot secure itself [from such attacks], how can people expect anything from these security organisations?" Kabul MP Nazifa Zaki said.
In light of the recent spate of Taliban prisoners being released from Pakistan and the fact that the Taliban had used a similar ploy to kill the head of the High Peace Council Burhanuddin Rabbani last year infuriated some of the lawmakers.
"The government should learn from its previous mistakes – how long will people be sacrificed in suicide attacks?" Ghour MP Ikramuddin said.
"On one hand the peace council goes to Pakistan and releases Taliban prisoners, and on the other hand Taliban always answers with attacks. What does it mean?" Kunduz MP Fatima Aziz said.
Some parliamentarians called for the government to end the activities of the High Peace Council saying its efforts were ineffective.
Meanwhile, President Hamid Karzai dismissed the Taliban claim of responsibility for the Thursday afternoon attack against Khalid saying it was too "professional" for the militants.
He ordered a delegation to investigate and said that Pakistan would also be asked to cooperate because it was known "for a fact" that the bomber was from Pakistan and the bomb plot was believed to have been planned in Quetta.
Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Seddiqi confirmed that "the delegation assigned to investigate started its first meeting today and will soon clarify its findings."
Khalid is in a stable condition in a hospital at Bagram airfield, according to officials.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers December 09, 2012 12:46:28 PM
WASHINGTON - The Afghan government is pursuing an ambitious new peace initiative in which Pakistan would replace the United States in arranging direct talks between the warring sides and the Taliban would be granted government posts that effectively could cede to them political control of their southern and eastern strongholds.
If implemented, the plan would diminish the role of the United States in the peace process, but would still leave Washington with input on a number of critical issues, including the terms for initiating negotiations. Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Great Britain also would be involved.
The plan envisions ending the war by 2015 through a ceasefire and negotiations in the second half of next year, most likely in Saudi Arabia. Pakistan would help select the leaders of the Taliban and other rebel groups who would take part in the negotiations with the Afghan government. The effort, the plan says, should be conducted “through one consistent and coherent channel,” a measure that would secure a role for Afghan President Hamid Karzai after the end of his term following April 2014 elections.
Another provision would give the insurgents a voice on “issues related . . . to the withdrawal” of the U.S.-led NATO force by the end of 2014.
The plan foresees the United States working with Kabul and Islamabad in determining which insurgent leaders would participate. The United States also would be critical to approving the removal of the insurgent negotiators from the U.N.’s list of terrorists.
Entitled “Peace Process Roadmap to 2015,” the blueprint represents a decision by Karzai – in close coordination with Pakistan – to assume the lead in peace-making efforts following the collapse earlier this year of an Obama administration bid to persuade the Taliban to participate in direct talks with Kabul.
The new initiative comes amid persistent distrust between Karzai and the Obama administration and deep insecurity in Kabul over future U.S. support. Those concerns and the U.S. failure to arrange peace talks appear to have pushed Karzai closer to Pakistan, whose army and main intelligence service are widely believed to exercise significant influence over Taliban and other militant leaders based in Pakistan’s border areas with Afghanistan.
The plan also comes as the ongoing U.S. combat troop pullout and cuts in U.S. financial aid to Afghanistan are fueling fears in both countries that violence and instability could worsen, spurring them to take matters into their own hands.
The blueprint, a copy of which was obtained by McClatchy, officially is the work of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council, which is charged with overseeing government peace efforts. But it was drafted by Karzai and his inner circle over the past six months in coordination with Pakistan, according to a person familiar with the document who requested anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
The plan was presented to Pakistan and the United States during visits last month by High Peace Council Chairman Salauddin Rabbani, who Karzai named to the post after Rabbani’s father, former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, was assassinated in September 2011.
The State Department declined to comment on the plan, refusing even to confirm its existence. However, a State Department official, who requested anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity, was authorized to say that, “The United States continues to support an Afghan-led peace process and welcomes initiatives through which Afghans sit down with other Afghans in pursuit of that goal."
The Afghan embassy did not respond to a request to discuss the plan.
“By 2015, Taliban, Hezb-e-Islami and other armed groups will have given up armed opposition, transformed from military entities into political parties, and are actively participating in the country’s political and constitutional processes, including national elections,” says the plan’s preamble. “NATO/ISAF forces will have departed from Afghanistan, leaving the ANSF (Afghan National Security Forces) as the only legitimate armed forces delivering security and protection to the Afghan population.”
Despite that optimistic forecast, however, the plan may rest on shaky legs. Its far-reaching assumptions not only could doom it to failure, but risk an all-out civil war before the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, completes its pullout.
“This is living in a dream world of wishful thinking,” said Marvin Weinbaum, a Middle East Institute scholar who served as a State Department intelligence analyst on Afghanistan. “It is not based on anything that the Taliban has given us reason to expect.”
A major assumption is that all insurgent leaders and their fighters will participate even though the Taliban have consistently rejected negotiations with Karzai, who they denounce as an American puppet. Moreover, the insurgency is far from being monolithic and many leaders are known to distrust each other and Pakistan.
Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar and other leaders based in Pakistan could come under pressure from the Pakistani military to take part if they balk. But such pressure could backfire, risking Afghan militants joining Pakistani Islamists fighting to topple their government.
In an incident underscoring the hurdles, two Taliban factions claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack on Thursday that wounded Asadullah Khalid, the chief of Afghanistan’s intelligence service. Karzai on Saturday alleged that the attack was planned in Pakistan, but he denied that the Taliban were responsible.
The new plan would preserve Afghanistan as a parliamentary democracy, denying the militants the Islamic rule for which they’ve spent years fighting.
It also appears to ignore warnings from politicians of the former Northern Alliance against giving the Taliban and their allies power that they hadn’t won in elections. The Northern Alliance, dominated by ethnic minorities, battled the Taliban, which is made up primarily of the dominant Pashtun ethnic group, until the 2001 U.S. invasion. Many former alliance members now head Karzai’s political opposition and hold key army, police and intelligence posts.
"Any Afghanistan reconciliation effort will have to address varied and complex ethnic concerns,” acknowledged a U.S. official, who requested anonymity in order to discuss the issue.
Finally, the key role that the plan confers on Pakistan could inflame suspicion among many Afghans that Islamabad plans to exert influence in a post-war Afghanistan – especially to block a pro-India tilt – by placing former insurgents in cabinet posts, ministries, provincial governorships and positions like police chiefs and district administrators.
“The northerners won’t buy this,” said Weinbaum, referring to former Northern Alliance leaders. “So what you get then is the beginning of a civil war.”
Pakistan is widely despised in Afghanistan, particularly by minorities who dominate the country’s north, because of its sponsorship of the Taliban’s bloody nationwide takeover in the mid-1990s and the support and sanctuary that they and other insurgents allegedly still receive from the Pakistani army and the army-run Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI.
In principles governing the new peace process, the plan reiterates Afghan and U.S. demands that the Taliban and other insurgents cut ties with al Qaida and renounce violence.
But in a shift that could raise concerns among human rights and women’s groups, the plan changes what had been a demand for the insurgents “accept” the Afghan Constitution to one that they “respect” it.
“Any outcome of the peace process must respect the Afghan Constitution and must not jeopardize the rights and freedoms that the citizens of Afghanistan, both men and women, enjoy under the Constitution,” the plan says.
The plan comprises five steps. The first step, which now appears underway, calls for Pakistan to end cross-border shelling of Afghan villages and to free Taliban detainees. Nine were released last month after Rabbani’s visit, and Pakistan has agreed to free more.
In the first half of 2013, Afghan, U.S. and Pakistani officials are to agree on terms for removing Taliban leaders “willing to engage in peace talks” from a U.N. terrorism list and giving them safe passage. Pakistan would “facilitate direct contact” between Afghan officials “and identified leaders of the Taliban and other armed opposition groups.”
Afghan, Pakistani and U.S. officials would “explore and agree to terms for initiating direct peace talks “ between the sides “with a focus on Saudi Arabia as the venue.”
The negotiations would begin in the second half of 2013 “preferably through one consistent and coherent channel, with the aim of securing agreements on priority issues, such as ending violence, allowing space for the provision of basic public services, e.g. education, humanitarian aid, and security the conduct of the upcoming elections,” the plan says.
The sides would agree to a ceasefire and terms for the release of Taliban prisoners by the government “in return for their agreement to disengage and renounce violence.”
The sides also would “reach an understanding on issues related to security and the withdrawal of international forces.” and agree on rules for the insurgents’ participation in 2014 provincial council and 2015 parliamentary elections.
Another provision would confer considerable political power on the insurgents by allowing them to become cabinet members, provincial governors, district administrators, police chiefs and other key officials.
“The negotiating parties to agree on modalities for the inclusion of Taliban and other armed opposition leaders in the power structure of the state, to include non-elected positions at different levels with due consideration of legal and governance principles,” the plan says.
That provision, combined with one for an agreement “creating immediate space for education and humanitarian and development aid and public services,” could effectively cede political control of the Taliban’s southern and eastern heartland to the insurgents.
The agreements would be implemented in the first half of 2014, and the final phase, set for the second half of 2014, would be used to build international cooperation on preserving the long-term stability of Afghanistan and the region, the plan says.
CORRECTION: Paragraph 10 of this version has been revised to provide the correct date for the assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani.
Email: jlanday@mcclatchydc.com; Twitter: @jonathanlanday
Protesters Attack Iranian Consulate In Herat
December 9, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Reports from Herat say some 200 demonstrators tried to storm Iran’s consulate in the western Afghan city in protest at the alleged killing of Afghan immigrants by Iranian security forces.
Reports say the crowd threw rocks and broke the consulate's windows before security forces drove them back by firing warning shots into the air.
At least three protesters were reported injured in the clashes.
The demonstrators called on Tehran to hand over the bodies of 13 Afghans who they say crossed the border into Iran, where they were seized and shot dead by Iranian security forces some three months ago.
More than 2 million Afghan refugees and illegal immigrants live in Iran.
Based on reporting by AFP, bokhdinews.af, and khaama.com
Karzai: U.S. Troops Can Have Immunity In Exchange For 'Sovereignty'
December 9, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Afghan President Hamid Karzai says he is willing to consider giving immunity to U.S. troops in a security agreement to be signed next year if his demand for "Afghanistan's sovereignty" is respected.
The deal will outline the form of a U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, as well as the number of troops and bases, after NATO forces withdraw in 2014.
Karzai said his key demands were that the United States hand over all detainees in its custody and shut all its jails in the country, rescind control of Afghan airspace, and refrain from raids on Afghan villages.
"Within those conditions, and once those conditions are fulfilled...Afghanistan is willing to consider immunity" for the troops, he said.
The United States still has more than 65,000 soldiers in Afghanistan.
Based on reporting by dpa and AFP
Abducted U.S. Doctor Freed In Afghanistan
December 9, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
A U.S. doctor who had been abducted by the Taliban five days ago has been rescued in eastern Afghanistan.
In a statement, NATO-led forces said Dilip Joseph had been captured by Taliban fighters on December 5 outside the Afghan capital, Kabul.
The mission to rescue him early on December 9 was ordered after information showed that Joseph was "in imminent danger of injury or death."
General John Allen, the top commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said the rescue was carried out by U.S. and Afghan forces.
No other details of the rescue operation were immediately available.
Based on reporting by AP and Reuters
14 militants killed in Afghanistan within 24 hours
KABUL, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- Up to 14 Taliban militants have been killed and five others detained in different military operations in Afghanistan, authorities said Sunday.
"The Afghan National Police in partnership with the army and the NATO-led coalition forces launched eight cleanup operations in Kunar, Kandahar, Logar, Helmand and Nimroz provinces, killing eight Taliban insurgents and detaining five others over the past 24 hours," the country's Interior Ministry said in a statement.
They also found and seized weapons, the statement said, without saying if there were any casualties on the side of security forces.
In another development, six militants were killed in a coalition airstrike in Helmand province 555 km south of capital Kabul on Saturday evening, a provincial police spokesman said Sunday.
"The killed militants were involved in anti-government activities. Prior to their deaths they crammed a car with explosives to launch terror attack possibly in provincial capital Lashkar Gah," spokesman Farid Farhang told Xinhua.
"The explosives-packed car was powerful enough to have caused significant injury or loss of life," he said, adding that weapons and the booby-trapped vehicle were destroyed in the raid that took place in the Sara Godar area outside Lashkar Gah at about 4:30 p.m. local time Saturday.
The Taliban has been waging an insurgency since its regime was toppled by a U.S-led invasion in late 2001.
A total of three civilians were killed and 90 others wounded when Taliban carried out a suicide car bombing in eastern Wardak province on Nov. 23.
Khalid Will Return as Spy Chief, Karzai Says
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 08 December 2012
Afghanistan's spy chief Asadullah Khalid will return to his position as head of intelligence when he makes a full recovery from Thursday's assassination attempt against him, President Hamid Karzai said Saturday.
A full investigation into the attack is underway, Karzai said at the Saturday press conference, but one thing is already known for sure - the bomber was from Pakistan.
"We know that this man who came as a guest to meet with Asadullah Khalid came from Pakistan. We know that for a fact," he told reporters, adding that he was hopeful of Pakistan's full cooperation with the investigation.
Khalid survived the Thursday afternoon suicide attack at a National Directorate of Security guesthouse in Kabul, but received substantial injuries to the lower part of his body.
After receiving emergency surgery and blood transfusions at the NDS hospital in Kabul, he was moved to Bagram Airfield hospital for ongoing treatment.
The bomber, who met with Khalid on the pretext of peace talks, carried the bomb in his underwear, according to an AFP report quoting NDS official.
Isaf commander Gen. John Allen visited Khalid at Bagram on Friday and spoke with his medical team, according to a statement from Isaf.
"Asadullah Khalid has led the National Directorate of Security with great courage and determination," Allen said following the visit. "I wish this lionhearted Afghan patriot a speedy recovery. My prayers are with him and his family during this trying period."
Karzai said Friday that he was told by doctors that Khalid was "doing well".
Afghan experts have voiced concerns that the Afghan chief of intelligence was able to be targeted in this way and warned of people losing faith in the country's capacity to secure itself.
"The National Directorate of Security and especially the National Security Council should clarify to the people of Afghanistan whether there were the hands of the regional intelligence involved or whether it is really the enemies [insurgents]," analyst Gen. Ahminullah Amarkhil told TOLOnews on Friday.
A civil society activist Mohammad Ismael Azad said, "The main challenge for the Afghan government or the system is this: that they don't know who is on their side, so they are getting it wrong. They should know their allies."
The attack is similar to the suicide bombing that killed the chairman of the Afghan High Peace Council Burhanuddin Rabbani in September 2011.
Rabbani was killed at his home in a meeting with an apparent peace envoy who had hidden a bomb in his turban.
Khalid has already survived at least two other attempts on his life. One was in southern Kandahar province in October 2011 while he serving as the Minister of Border and Tribal Affairs, and another in a 2008 roadside bombing when he was governor of Kandahar in 2008.
Khalid was appointed head of the NDS by Karzai in September.
For Afghan Officials, Facing Prospect of Death Is in the Job Description
New York Times By AZAM AHMED December 8, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - There are so many ways for an Afghan official to die: car bombs, suicide attacks, a volley of bullets or, in the case of one particularly enterprising assassin, a handgun hidden in the sole of a shoe.
On Thursday, a Taliban suicide bomber with a bomb hidden in his groin area tried to assassinate the new chief of Afghanistan’s intelligence service in Kabul, seriously wounding him. Two weeks before, insurgents welcomed two of the country’s newest governors with an armed assault in Helmand Province and a car bomb that leveled an entire city block in Wardak Province. Both governors survived and came away with an attribute essential for politicians here: a sharpened sense of fatalism.
“Assassination attempts are a part of the job,” said Abdul Majid Khogyani, the new Wardak governor, seated in a makeshift office in his compound’s frigid courtyard, the only place untouched by the bombing. “It comes with the package.” He actually grinned.
Government officials here do not worry so much about the wrath of constituents; a more immediate fear is coldblooded assassination at the hands of the Taliban. Public service jobs are among the most dangerous in Afghanistan, with hundreds of officials killed every year. The more important the official, the greater the risk — some particularly fortunate, and well defended, governors have survived more than a dozen assassination attempts.
In the last few years, the Taliban have stepped up their campaign against politicians, targeting dozens of provincial and district governors, police chiefs and even marginal officials. It has been an effective tool, demonstrating the insurgents’ power to inflict chaos and sow fear among government supporters. Last year, assassinations claimed 304 lives, the most since 2001, according to a United Nations report.
Barring the remote possibility of a peace agreement with the Taliban, the killings are only likely to rise as the American-led military coalition withdraws its combat forces over the next two years.
Perhaps the most favored targets are the 34 provincial governors, most of whom are far from the relatively secure enclave of Kabul. Appointed by the president, governors are often the highest-ranking officials most Afghans will ever see.
If the persistence of attacks suggests a high-priority target, Gulab Mangal, the former governor of Helmand Province, is a Taliban trophy. Mr. Mangal survived 17 deadly attacks in his five years in office, including a rocket attack on a helicopter, before he was replaced this year by President Hamid Karzai.
“Even my friends asked me to quit,” he said, emitting a burst of laughter. “But I loved my job and slowly, as time went on, I grew fearless.”
Not all politicians are so fortunate. Last year, a suicide bomber with explosives in his turban killed the mayor of Kandahar. This spring, the former governor of Uruzgan was fatally gunned down. A man wearing a police uniform with a suicide bomb vest underneath killed Gen. Daoud Daoud, the police commander who oversaw security in nine northern provinces, last year. The year before, insurgents killed the governor of Kunduz Province by bombing the mosque where he prayed.
Though some assassinations are carried out for personal reasons, most are political. Despite the risks, governorships have retained their allure. While the position pays an average of only $23,000 a year, the job affords great power, and abundant opportunities for patronage and corruption.
And after three decades of war — with the Soviets, among themselves or against the Taliban — some Afghans say they have become inured to the threat of death.
“The mind-set we have in Afghanistan is different,” said Farid Mamundzay, a deputy minister at the Independent Directorate of Local Governance. “We see people dying on a weekly if not daily basis. We’ve gotten used to it.”
“If you die, you die,” he added.
Still, politicians take security seriously, spending vast amounts, sometimes from their own pockets, and often taking a direct role in their self-preservation.
“I should know personally every individual who is serving me as a security guard,” insisted Abdul Jabar Taqwa, the governor of Kabul, tightening his right fist, which is knotted with white scars from burns from a 2011 bomb attack.
In Parwan Province, just north of Kabul, Gov. Abdul Basir Salangi has survived three attacks during his four years as governor. Asked how, he reached over to the side of his desk and produced a loaded assault rifle.
“I take this with me everywhere,” he said, nestling the gun against his shoulder. “To the office, to my home, everywhere.”
A former jihadi commander during the war against the Soviets, he knows how to use it, his staff members say, and is more than happy to do so. When six suicide bombers stormed the gates of his compound last year, he looked out his office window, spotted an insurgent and shot him in the face.
The bombers killed 22 people. Mr. Salangi keeps the grisly images of the attack in his office, a banquet hall-style room with seven gold and glass chandeliers and a faux fireplace.
“The enemy is always watching us,” he said. “If they find a single opportunity, they will take it.”
Leaving the job hardly guarantees one’s safety. “I’m a target even now,” said Mr. Mangal, who left his post in Helmand this year. Only now he has less security.
Mr. Mangal was deeply unpopular with insurgents in Helmand for his efforts to eradicate opium poppy cultivation, a lucrative business that helps finance the Taliban and other entrenched interests. Six armed men guard his Kabul home, with several more posted behind a concrete reinforced door and another guard in front of the house.
His family never grew accustomed to the constant attacks.
“Before he was a governor, we had a normal, happy life,” said Muhammad Anwar, his oldest son, a university student. “We would have preferred him to have a smaller but secure job, where he was safe and we were, too.”
Mr. Khogyani, the governor of Wardak, was at all times surrounded by a dozen armed men, part of the group of 50 who protect his compound. He has so far refused to accept assistance from the local police chief, fearful of corruption. Instead, he foots the bill himself, paying the sons of his former mujahedeen comrades to serve as his security detail.
Mr. Khogyani walked slowly around his bombed-out compound, detailing the wreckage with a strange mix of fear and pride: his bedroom, where the roof had lifted from the house; his kitchen, collapsed in a heap of steel and brick; his wooden bed frame, in splinters, tossed 10 yards from the house to rest by a fountain.
He climbed atop the remnants of a wall along the edge of the yard. Beyond it, everything within 100 yards of the blast was leveled: a midwifery, the bureau of statistics, an entire block of homes.
Asked whether he considered revenge, he paused, then shook his head.
“I have accepted that one day I will die,” he said. “If my time is up, no one will save me.”
Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Kabul, Jawad Sukhanyar from Parwan, and Habib Zohori from Wardak
3 Killed in US Drone Strike in Pakistan
VOA News December 9, 2012
Officials in Pakistan said a suspected U.S. drone strike has killed three militants near the Afghan border.
Officials said drone missiles hit a militant compound Sunday in Miran Shah, the main town in North Waziristan, known as a stronghold of Taliban and al-Qaida militants.
Pakistan has repeatedly criticized U.S. drone attacks as a violation of its sovereignty.
U.S. officials have said the strikes are an important tool in defeating militants.
Some information for this report was provided by AP and AFP.
Attack on Spy Chief Won't Derail Peace Moves, Says Karzai
Wall Street Journal By NATHAN HODGE And ZIAULHAQ SULTANI December 8, 2012
KABUL - Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Saturday that a suicide-bombing attack that nearly claimed the life of his spy chief wouldn't derail efforts to reach out to the Taliban.
Speaking at a press conference at the presidential palace in Kabul, Mr. Karzai said the attempted assassination on Thursday was a deliberate attempt to thwart peace initiatives but vowed to press ahead with a bid to facilitate talks with the insurgent leadership.
"Our efforts for the security and stability of Afghanistan will continue," he said.
Later this month, representatives of the Taliban are supposed to travel to France to meet leading Afghan politicians in a potentially ground-breaking attempt to open dialogue between the insurgency and the country's main power brokers. The planned meeting, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, is supposed to include two advisers to Mr. Karzai.
Mr. Karzai said he welcomed the initiative, organized by a French think tank, as a positive step but added that future contacts should be held inside Afghanistan. "The best place to talk and bring peace between Afghans is Afghanistan," he said.
The Taliban have consistently rejected the idea of negotiating directly with Mr. Karzai, describing him as a puppet of foreign powers. But Mr. Karzai said he personally met a representative of the Taliban as recently as Friday.
On Thursday, a suicide bomber posing as a Taliban peace emissary seriously wounded Asadullah Khalid, the head of the country's National Directorate of Security. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which took place inside one of the agency's guest houses in a residential neighborhood of Kabul.
While Mr. Karzai didn't directly blame the Pakistani government, he claimed the attack was organized in Quetta, Pakistan, the headquarters of the Taliban high command. The sophistication of the attack, he suggested, pointed to the involvement of an unnamed foreign agency. "The Taliban took responsibility, but the truth is that such a skillful attack...is not manageable by the Taliban," he said.
The Pakistani foreign affairs ministry later said in a statement that the Afghan government should share information or evidence it might have about the attack before it starts leveling charges, the Associated Press reported. The ministry also offered to help the Afghan government investigate any lapses it had in the intelligence chief's security. "Pakistan is ready to assist any investigation of this criminal act," it said.
The assassination attempt immediately prompted questions about how the bomber managed to bring the device inside the guarded compound. In a statement Friday, the NDS said the explosives charge was "skillfully placed" on the attacker's body, apparently concealed in his underwear.
High-level dignitaries in Afghanistan are usually surrounded by rings of armed security, and physical pat-downs are a routine measure for anyone wishing to meet an Afghan VIP. But Afghanistan's deeply conservative culture also forbids intimate physical contact between strangers, and searching a person's groin or underwear would be considered extremely offensive.
Mr. Karzai alluded to this, saying the attacker took advantage of Mr. Khalid's sense of propriety. "Khalid himself refused complete search of the attacker because of hospitality we Afghans have," he said.
Mr. Khalid is now being treated at the U.S. military hospital at Bagram, north of Kabul. Mr. Karzai said the spy chief was conscious and able to speak.
Thursday's attack came amid an apparent thaw in Afghan-Pakistani relations and renewed efforts to jump-start a stalled peace process. Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul traveled to Pakistan late last month in a bid to establish direct contacts with the Taliban; Afghan and Pakistani officials are also expected to meet in the coming days in Turkey.
The attempt on Mr. Khalid's life also prompted theorizing about a possible reprisal for a string of recent bombing attacks in Quetta that claimed the lives of some Taliban officials. Mr. Karzai dismissed such speculation as "totally false."
In September 2011, former Afghan President Burhannudin Rabbani, the Afghan government's point man for reaching out to the insurgents, was killed by a suicide bomber who had concealed a bomb in his turban. Mr. Karzai said that the July 2011 assassination of his younger half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, also took place as "intensive peace talks" were beginning.
"Every time we take one step forward to peace talks...these attacks happen," he said.
Write to Nathan Hodge at nathan.hodge@wsj.com
Iran seizes over 11 tons of illicit drugs
TEHRAN, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Iranian border police have seized over 11 tons of illicit drugs in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan, semi-official Mehr news agency reported Sunday.
Iran's border police chief, Brigadier General Hossein Zolfaqari, said Saturday that after 36 hours of clash with smugglers, 11.039 tons of illicit drugs were seized. Of this amount, 10.693 tons was opium and the rest was hashish, he added.
It is the largest shipment that has been seized since 1979, Zolfaqari was quoted as saying.
Border police forces, who had been informed about the planned movement of illicit drugs across the border, were stationed along a 77-km stretch of border between Iran and Pakistan, clashed with smugglers and seized the shipment after killing one of the smugglers and injuring a number of them, said Zolfaqari.
On Oct. 17, a senior Iranian police commander, Colonel Eftekhari, said Iranian Law Enforcement Police Forces seized over 4.5 tons of opium after intercepting a drug cargo near the country 's capital city of Tehran.
Iran is located at the crossroad of the international drug smuggling route from Afghanistan to Europe.
US-led coalition: American doctor abducted by Taliban rescued in eastern Afghanistan
Associated Press Sunday, December 9, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - An American doctor abducted by the Taliban five days ago was rescued Sunday in eastern Afghanistan, the U.S.-led military coalition said.
Dr. Dilip Joseph was captured by Taliban insurgents Wednesday outside the Afghan capital, in the Sarobi district of Kabul province.
He was rescued in an early morning operation ordered after intelligence showed that the doctor was in imminent danger of injury or possible death, according to a statement.
“This was a combined operation of U.S. and Afghan forces,” said 1st Lt. Joseph Alonso, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan. “Information was collected through multiple intelligence sources, which allowed Afghan and coalition forces to identify the location of Joseph and the criminals responsible for his captivity.”
Gen. John Allen, the top commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said the joint force planned, rehearsed and successfully conducted the operation.
“Thanks to them, Dr. Joseph will soon be rejoining his family and loved ones,” Allen said.
The statement did not say where Joseph is from, or whether he was harmed in captivity.
No other details of the rescue operation were immediately available.
ECC Removal Violates Constitution: Political Parties Council
TOLOnews.com By Haseeb Maudoodi Saturday, 08 December 2012
The Cabinet's decision to remove the Election Complaints Commission (ECC) from the electoral process goes against provisions in Afghanistan's constitution for a fair and transparent poll, the Cooperation and Coordination Council of Political Parties (CCPP) said Saturday.
CCPP members on Saturday urged lawmakers not to approve the redrafted election law without the ECC because it will not guarantee a transparent election.
"The Cabinet decision is against the provisions of Afghanistan's constitution and a facilitator of more fraud," CCPP member Hamidullah Farooqi said. "The election is a national and professional process. A professional and independent organ should follow up any issues related to it."
The Council of Ministers last Monday approved the election law with the exception of the independent ECC. Instead, the ministers recommended that oversight of the final poll decision will be assigned to the president-appointed Supreme Court.
"The Afghan courts are not able to fairly resolve the issues of the election as it has been shown in the past. A special and professional commission should follow up these issues," CCPP member Asadullah Sahadati said at the press conference.
The politicians also accused the government of sidelining political parties and not engaging in dialogue to solve national issues.
"There is no place for the political parties and civil society organs within the Afghan government which is a dangerous sign," CCPP member Faizullah Zaki said, adding that he fears there will be fraud in the next election.
"The government is also not eager to solve issues through dialogue with political parties," he said.
The CCPP is a coalition of at least 20 Afghan political parties launched in September to push for a transparent and fair election. The next election is less than 16 months away on April 5 2014.
The ECC has been a more politically sensitive since the parliament approved the presence of two foreign commissioners on its board. However, that approval was subsequently rejected by the senate in a vote last month.
The Council of Ministers decision to remove the ECC altogether will require approval again from the parliament.
Afghanistan Seeks Divorce From Long-Standing Marital Traditions
By Farangis Najibullah December 9, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
In Afghanistan, few bat an eye when a young suitor spends a small fortune to secure his bride.
The payment of a "walwar" -- essentially a premarital fee paid to the bride-to-be's parents -- can run into the thousands of dollars, adding to the already exorbitant costs plunked down for the wedding itself.
Now there is a movement within the country's government to divorce the Afghan people from such long-standing but financially crippling customs.
The Afghan Women's Affairs Ministry is waging war on the walwar, arguing that it is not only technically illegal but unnecessarily buries families under tremendous debt.
"The campaign mainly focuses on unaffordable walwars, a shameful custom, which is putting enormous financial strain on families," says Deputy Women's Affairs Minister Mezhgan Mustafavi. "But it also includes a fight against some of our other marital traditions, such as marrying off girls to settle family feuds -- a so-called 'bad' marriage."
The goal of the campaign is to improve women's lives and protect their rights, because ultimately it's the woman in the arrangement who suffers the consequences, Mustafavi says.
In the case of walwar payments, the bride often "starts her new life in a family struggling under the burden of debt," Mustafavi says. "Or, in the case of 'bad' marriages, she is usually treated as an enemy's daughter."
Clerics' Participation Vital
The ministry has called on the country's influential clerics, as well as media and law-enforcement agencies, to help promote the campaign.
Some 400 religious figures from all over the country recently assembled in Kabul for a meeting organized with the help of the Hajj and Religious Affairs Ministry, during which they condemned the walwar tradition and other long-standing customs that violate women's rights.
The clerics agreed to include lectures on marital traditions in their mosque sermons, potentially reaching millions of Afghans throughout the country.
The popular television station Tolo agreed to record such sermons and broadcast them weekly during peak hours.
In Afghanistan's deeply conservative society, the word of clerics carries significant weight and the Women's Affairs Ministry considers their participation vital to the success of the campaign.
"Many people don't know that expensive walwars, which effectively mean selling your daughter, have nothing to do with Islam," Mustafavi says. "In fact, it violates both civil and Shari'a laws."
"According to Afghanistan's law banning violence against women, selling or buying a person in the context of marriage is a crime punishable with up to 10 years' imprisonment," Mustafavi says. "Our civil laws ban any un-Islamic preconditions in matrimonies. Our Family Code clearly states that customs like the walwar, bride price, marrying off girls to settle family scores, or marrying off girls as a blood price for a victim's family are against Islam. Therefore, such customs are forbidden."
Thousands Of Dollars
Shari'a law does allow for a potential bride to request money from the groom's family. While the amount is not fixed, Shari'a rules advise that the amount should be small and easily affordable to her new family.
Some clerics even estimate that the amount should not exceed a few hundred Afghanis, the equivalent of $5 or $10.
In reality, however, the families of many Afghan brides demand that the groom spend thousands of dollars in walwar payments and other gifts, including jewelry. In addition, the groom is required to pay for a lavish wedding banquet and a string of wedding-related parties.
The ministry estimates that the average Afghan family spends up to $15,000 in wedding costs.
In the social sphere, the cost of the dowry and the lavishness of the wedding parties can affect each family's social standing. To affirm high status, families save for years and young men commonly leave home to endure years of hard labor abroad to raise cash.
Desperate to avoid such costs, some families that have both sons and daughters marry off the groom's sister to the bride's brother in so-called "badal" marriages, which literally translates as "exchange."
"The laws to punish such actions have almost never been exercised," says Mustafavi. "We have asked law-enforcement agencies to bring to justice a few people who violate these laws in order to remind others that it is a crime to sell your daughter."
With contributions from RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan
One raid, two stories: Were insurgents killed? Or just a man’s family?
Washington Post By Anna Husarska December 8 , 2012
This is a story of an Afghan wedding gone badly wrong. Or perhaps of “an operation in search of an insurgent leader,” as the official report later said. It is hard to tell which. Probably both.
Meet Abdulrashid, a man with no last name, no profession, no literacy skills and no exact date of birth. He might be in his 30s. I first encounter him as I am interviewing internally displaced people in Afghanistan to highlight their fate, lest the world forget about them after foreign troops withdraw in 2014. Other refugees point him out, ask me to listen to his story: “Tell the world, please.”
Abdulrashid starts by describing to me an idyllic scene from this past March: As the last snows were melting in his village in northern Afghanistan, friends and family gathered in his three-room house to celebrate his sister’s wedding. This was in Faryab province, considered to be among the more peaceful areas in Afghanistan. While the war has raged in the south and the east, Faryab has escaped relatively unharmed.
In Afghan tradition, the wedding guests were dressed in their best and dining on an expansive buffet. At about 8 p.m., Abdulrashid’s wife stepped away to a quiet spot near the window to breast-feed their 2 1/2-year-old son.
And the idyll was suddenly shattered.
Helicopters were heard overhead, and then a voice shouted in Dari that everyone should come outside, walking backward. But before the guests could get out the door — I learn now to my utter surprise that the bride was 12 years old and the groom, the brother of Abdulrashid’s wife, was 14 — the house was full of soldiers, women and men. Abdulrashid could not tell their nationalities; some were Afghan and “some not,” he said, but they were “heavy with equipment.”
Then two explosions ripped through the house. Abdulrashid can’t say what caused them — bombs fired from a drone (prevalent in the area at the time) or an aircraft, or grenades tossed from the ground — but he is clear that “they destroyed two rooms” and wounded his youngest sister as well as the bride. The explosions, he says, were followed by shots fired from the outside, through the window.
Abdulrashid’s wife, Jamila, was hit. The child at her breast, Naquibullah, was struck in the neck and the abdomen and killed instantly. Jamila had a wound in her arm that gushed blood, and she was taken on a helicopter to a medical facility. Today, Jamila cannot use her arm.
Abdulrashid says his uncle, Baba Nazar, was also killed in this joint operation of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the Afghan National Security Forces. Afghans call these dreaded counterinsurgency operations, conducted by surprise and under the cover of darkness, “night raids.” In April, one month after this incident, the United States agreed to hand control over these raids to Afghan forces.
The ISAF, a U.N.-mandated international force under NATO control, was created in 2001. Part of its broad mission is to help the Afghan government “reduce the capability and will of the insurgency.”
After hearing Abdulrashid’s story, I search the ISAF’s Web site for its version of the events. The post-operation report makes no mention of a wedding party. It says that “an operation in search of an insurgent leader” who “plans and conducts attacks against coalition troops throughout northern Afghanistan” was conducted. The women and children who came out of the building, it says, were followed by a man with an AK-47who opened fire from behind the civilians. Two other insurgents fired as well, one from inside the building and the other from a nearby tent. “The security force returned fire, killing the three armed aggressors.”
The ISAF account goes on to state the only facts that coincide with Abdulrashid’s version of events: Jamila’s injuries and her evacuation to a hospital. No word of a child in her arms, nor of the uncle.
Abdulrashid says he is certain that no “insurgents” were killed; the only ones who perished that day were his son and his uncle, “over 60” years old.
Establishing the truth in Afghanistan is a daunting task. Those who follow the increasingly frequent attacks by Afghans on their mentors — allied soldiers, mostly Americans — suspect that all the locals are hostile to foreign troops. But those who follow the civilian death count have doubts about the ISAF reports.
Ten days later, on March 26, another night raid was conducted in the same vicinity and, Abdulrashid’s neighbors told him, nobody was killed. (He was with Jamila in the hospital at the time.) Yet the ISAF report on this incident says that “the combined security force was engaged by multiple insurgents with small arms fire. The security force returned fire, killing the attacking insurgents.”
Again, it is difficult to determine the truth.
There are so many incident reports in the ISAF files; how would those same events be described by the Afghans involved, I wonder.
Later in March, according to Abdulrashid’s relatives and other Afghans, the Taliban staged two successive attacks on that same village. Abdulrashid thinks they were looking for relatives of one man because they believed he was collaborating with the international forces; possibly they blamed him for the two ISAF raids. In the first attack, they shot his son, Qari, 18. The next day, they killed a woman named Bibi and shot her husband.
Were those retaliatory attacks? Was it a warning, as Abdulrashid suggests? These are questions without answers.
The United Nations, which tracks civilian casualties in Afghanistan, has reported a significant drop in deaths attributable to the ISAF in the past year, and has said that Taliban and other insurgents cause far more fatalities among civilians. But it is hard to know how many deaths like that of little Naquibullah go unreported or how many civilians are branded by the ISAF as “combatants” just because they are fighting-age men.
Although the international forces acknowledged injuring Abdulrashid’s wife in the first raid, they have not offered him the normal compensation. The legal team of the Norwegian Refugee Council delivered a letter to an ISAF base on his behalf, stating that his son was killed and specifying the medical costs incurred by his wife. He is waiting for an answer.
The day after the second night raid by the ISAF, 10 families fled from Abdulrashid’s village. The day after the second Taliban attack, seven more families left. Most of them came to the outskirts of Mazar-e Sharif, where they squat in primitive compounds. A total of 99 people from this community were displaced in quick succession: 12 men, 17 women, 49 girls and 21 boys. The families lost their livelihoods, left their land and are now in an even more precarious situation. .
While it may prove impossible to pin down the events that overtook Abdulrashid’s village in March, one more casualty can be counted in this endless war: These 99 Afghan “hearts and minds,” if ever they could be won, are now irrevocably out of reach.
Anna Husarska, a policy analyst, was special consultant for the Norwegian Refugee Council in Afghanistan.
Post-France Kapisa Under Control: Governor
TOLOnews.com By Sayed Azim Arash Saturday, 08 December 2012
The security of northeastern Kapisa province has been stable since the complete withdrawal of foreign combat troops last week, local officials said Saturday.
Governor Mehrabuddin Safi said in a Kabul press conference that Kapisa's security has not been upset by the withdrawal of France's troops with Afghan security forces taking full responsibility for the province.
"Last week, all French forces withdrew from Kapisa province and now the Afghans have the ability to fully protect their nation. There is no security concern," Safi said.
He added that reconstruction process is underway in the province and that development projects will continue in the future.
France left Kapisa slightly ahead of the end of year deadline promised earlier this year by President Francois Hollande in the country's presidential election after security assessments concluded that the Afghan forces could manage.
France has been reducing its presence in Afghanistan for some time. In recent months, around 543 French troops were deployed with most of them stationed in Kapisa province. At its peak in 2008, France had around 3,300 soldiers in Afghanistan.
According to iCasualties website which tracks the deaths of the Nato-led forces, 86 French soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan in the past 11 years of the war.
Peace Talks, Intelligence Failing in Afghanistan: MPs
TOLOnews.com By Saleha Soadat Saturday, 08 December 2012
Lawmakers on Saturday lashed out at the government for the apparent failure of peace negotiations and security in the wake of the assassination attempt against Afghanistan's spy chief by a suicide bomber.
In the Saturday parliamentary session, MPs reacted to the news that the suicide bomber had met with National Directorate of Security (NDS) chief Asadullah Khalid on the pretext of being a peace envoy, and criticised the intelligence unit for failing to prevent the suicide attack.
"If the [NDS] organisation cannot secure itself [from such attacks], how can people expect anything from these security organisations?" Kabul MP Nazifa Zaki said.
In light of the recent spate of Taliban prisoners being released from Pakistan and the fact that the Taliban had used a similar ploy to kill the head of the High Peace Council Burhanuddin Rabbani last year infuriated some of the lawmakers.
"The government should learn from its previous mistakes – how long will people be sacrificed in suicide attacks?" Ghour MP Ikramuddin said.
"On one hand the peace council goes to Pakistan and releases Taliban prisoners, and on the other hand Taliban always answers with attacks. What does it mean?" Kunduz MP Fatima Aziz said.
Some parliamentarians called for the government to end the activities of the High Peace Council saying its efforts were ineffective.
Meanwhile, President Hamid Karzai dismissed the Taliban claim of responsibility for the Thursday afternoon attack against Khalid saying it was too "professional" for the militants.
He ordered a delegation to investigate and said that Pakistan would also be asked to cooperate because it was known "for a fact" that the bomber was from Pakistan and the bomb plot was believed to have been planned in Quetta.
Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Seddiqi confirmed that "the delegation assigned to investigate started its first meeting today and will soon clarify its findings."
Khalid is in a stable condition in a hospital at Bagram airfield, according to officials.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com